July 05, 2014

How to repel those pesky mosquitoes

It's not the noise of the buzzing around the ears that is so annoying, it's knowing you're about to become food for a critter higher on the food chain that is so galling.

I don't know if it's city wide, but here at the Sleepless Manor in Midland, Texas, there's at least one loose in the house.

Deet is the all time favorite mosquito repellent. Although it doesn't repel them, it blocks their ability to smell the things they're otherwise attracted to. I just bought two bottles of Repel 100 which should do the trick. However, like most folks, I would prefer not to get too many chemicals cycling through my liver. There's an internal debate going on over which is worse, mosquito bites now or the possibility of cirrhosis of the liver at some distant time in the future. Put that way, and after a glass of wine, the chemical risk doesn't seem that great.

One alternative is a mosquito net -- I've got two, one for the bed and one for camping. The aesthetics of mosquito netting probably make them more amenable to the campground than the bedroom. But when the buzzing is driving me batty, that ugly net starts to look like a canopy of beautiful flowers.

There are 346 chemicals involved in the scent of human hands, a study found in 2000, and 277 of them can attract the annoying critters. A key one seems to be l-lactic acid, which, when added to the scent of a less-targeted person, can make certain mosquitoes go after them.

Maybe we should just wash our hands.

Here's another one. Terminex has developed a bait with garlic oil and sugar. Apparently it works:

“They feed on it, and then, literally, the garlic oil makes them sick enough that they don’t want to then go bite a person,” Cope says.

Garlic. Hmm. If that works maybe Cecil Adams might want to update his opinion on the limitations of garlic as a repellent, although to be fair, he didn't contemplate the bait setup Terminex has. But for mild short term repellents he does include some other ingredients. To wit:

Garlic is only one of a list of plant compounds with similar "repellent" effects, including citronella, cedar, verbena, geranium, lavender, pine, cinnamon, rosemary, basil, thyme, allspice, and peppermint.

Here's an idea. Get all those compounds, grind them up, distill them into an oil, and burn them like e-cigarette smoke juice. It will be like a cloak of invisibility. The little buzzers won't even know we're there.